How Pakistan’s community health workers use telemedicine for women’s health. News feature from Shefali Malhotra.
, published by the Global System for Mobile Communications, there is a 33% gender gap for smartphone ownership and a 38% gender gap for mobile internet use .
Each lady health worker in Chakwal monitors about 10–12 families, visiting their homes regularly, screening for malnourished children and identifying pregnant women who may need medical advice or hospital attention. All the workers reserve one room in their own home, which locals call the ‘health house’, where they provide counseling to women in the community and conduct weekly meetings with community leaders.
Sehat Kahani runs three types of platform, each catering to a different segment of Pakistani society. One is a telehealth platform for low-income communities, where patients can visit a clinic and the nurse connects them to doctors online. The second is a helpline that enables patients to connect to doctors over the phone, in cases where they are unable to use the online platform. Finally, a mobile app is designed for urban smartphone users, where a patient can connect with a doctor directly.
For their part, the health workers say that the telehealth service has become indispensable to their work. “When doctors stopped seeing patients physically due to COVID-19, the app helped us connect with them virtually for abortion, contraception, sterilization and other services,” says Raheela Ajmal, a lady health worker in Pind Begwal, a village near Islamabad.
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